Google removes push to iOS mail?

This is quite surprising to me: I had to get a new iPhone 5 (replaced by Apple) and my old gmail account no longer can sync via exchange activesync. Only Google Apps accounts can sync that way. It's back to manual fetch for iPhone users.

Imagine the backlash if they just turned off everyone's current Google Sync accounts? This is effectively what they do when you change devices. It's not grandfathered by account, but by device.

That's some horseshit right there. You can't tell me removing push gmail to iOS' native Mail app isn't a little bit due to their Android/iPhone battle. It's simply dumb in my opinion to remove a feature so many people use and force those on iOS to use Google's native Gmail app...

Imagine the backlash if they just turned off everyone's current Google Sync accounts? This is effectively what they do when you change devices. It's not grandfathered by account, but by device.

That's some horseshit right there. You can't tell me removing push gmail to iOS' native Mail app isn't a little bit due to their Android/iPhone battle. It's simply dumb in my opinion to remove a feature so many people use and force those on iOS to use Google's native Gmail app...

You're reading too much in to it. It was a financial decision.

Push in the iOS e-mail client can be done two ways: Apple Proprietary (only works for iCloud accounts) or Microsoft Exchange. Google was offering push for GMail accounts by allowing access to GMail via Exchange, which they licensed from Microsoft. Google no longer wanted to license a competitor's technology without the end user paying for it (through a Google Apps for Business account, which does still support Exchange access for e-mail).

iOS would have to support IMAP IDLE in order for push to work without someone's proprietary solution.

I believe there's a way you can set it up as an exchange account in order to get push functionality back or something. I've never really felt like I needed anything like push on my google accounts and always disabled it for battery saving anyway ::shrug::

I believe there's a way you can set it up as an exchange account in order to get push functionality back or something.

If you have a paid Google Apps for Business account, yes. Exchange access is still supported (including push) for all current or future devices. If you have a free Google Apps account, or a plain jane GMail account, then you have grandfathered support for your current devices. Once you add a new device, support is cut off.

How is this evil? Google, up till now, has been paying out of its own pocket so that its users can get a free ride. If you want MS Exchange features, pay for it. You can get a hosted Exchange solution from Microsoft from as little as $4/month. Or push on Apple to support IMAP IDLE, like every other phone platform out there.

How is this evil? Google, up till now, has been paying out of its own pocket so that its users can get a free ride. If you want MS Exchange features, pay for it. You can get a hosted Exchange solution from Microsoft from as little as $4/month. Or push on Apple to support IMAP IDLE, like every other phone platform out there.

>_<

This one cares not for the push email, should one've read his posting thoroughly (including the bit with the ).

Generally speaking, the tongue in cheek part was, at the slightest hint of Google doing anything negative the critics climb out of the woodwork, decrying Google's motto of 'do no evil'.

It's worth noting that installing the Gmail app will give you push. You can always just use it for the notifications and use the regular mail app for everything else. Still not ideal, but I'm not leaving Gmail or my iPhone. When I upgrade I'll probably have to finally move over to my Google Apps account I have for my domain.

How is this evil? Google, up till now, has been paying out of its own pocket so that its users can get a free ride. If you want MS Exchange features, pay for it. You can get a hosted Exchange solution from Microsoft from as little as $4/month. Or push on Apple to support IMAP IDLE, like every other phone platform out there.

It was evil because it was part of a series of attacks on Microsoft platforms. iOS got caught in the attack, but Google made a Gmail app. The reasoning (CalDAV/CardDAV are better!) turned out to be bullshit when Google restricted access to CalDAV in favour of a proprietary API.

I think the funnier thing was the arguments from people who didn't even understand with ActiveSync was.

It's worth noting that installing the Gmail app will give you push. You can always just use it for the notifications and use the regular mail app for everything else. Still not ideal, but I'm not leaving Gmail or my iPhone. When I upgrade I'll probably have to finally move over to my Google Apps account I have for my domain.

I never did the Exchange thing just cause the early bugginess...bugged me too much with it. When the Gmail app came out I just used that for notifications but still use the regular Mail app for my actual mail usage. Kind of annoying since I can't just slide from the lock screen but it's not a big deal for me since I don't need to read/respond to everything that comes in.

Is there some hidden reason why Apple doesn't support IMAP IDLE? What's the rationale?

They do on OS X. I don't know why the wouldn't on iOS. I'm not entirely sure IMAP IDLE is a push technology anyway, though it may be possible to treat it as such, if the mail server is setup to be that aggressive in advertising new mails.

... If you want MS Exchange features, pay for it. You can get a hosted Exchange solution from Microsoft from as little as $4/month. Or push on Apple to support IMAP IDLE, like every other phone platform out there.

...or use a free push-enabled iCloud email account (you could also setup forwarding from your existing account to the push-enabled iCloud account).

Or a plain ol' Outlook.com account. Thanks to EAS, an Outlook.com account for contacts/email/calendaring gets you the broadest compatibility of push email across devices today. The major hole missing is OS X itself.

Is there some hidden reason why Apple doesn't support IMAP IDLE? What's the rationale?

They do on OS X. I don't know why the wouldn't on iOS. I'm not entirely sure IMAP IDLE is a push technology anyway, though it may be possible to treat it as such, if the mail server is setup to be that aggressive in advertising new mails.

Back in the original iPhone days I was told because it was too power consuming (and possibly data intensive) to keep an open connection to every IMAP server you have an account for. Apple has their own (shitty) proprietary push email notifications, so why would they bother to go back and change how everything else works?

As long as the native Mail app can still access Gmail (via IMAP), I'm fine with this. Now that I check: apparently I've been operating on hourly fetch, instead of push, for my Gmail configuration. It looks like that option doesn't even exist anymore (Settings -> Mail,Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Advanced -> @gmail.com). I just see Fetch and Manual.

Is there some hidden reason why Apple doesn't support IMAP IDLE? What's the rationale?

IMAP IDLE was never designed with mobile in mind but rather for desktop clients (such as having a connection per folder rather than a shared global connection), which means it would be more of a battery hog than Exchange Push.

I'm just syncing my *contacts* from my iPhone to my (non google apps) google account. It's set up as Exchange, of course.Does this mean that if i change my phone I'm screwed wrt to contacts syncing as well? Or just email?

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I figured that would be preferable to starting a new one. Has anyone discovered a reasonable workaround for enabling push email with Gmail that (1) doesn't involve the Gmail app and (2) avoids any issues with a non-Gmail reply-to? I'm not opposed to email forwarding -- in fact, with the new inbox tabs, that's actually preferable -- and I thought I had a workable solution by forwarding inbox items to an outlook.com address, but I can't figure out how to set up the iPhone to use a reply-to other than the outlook.com address. Is there perhaps something I missed?

That said, between this change last year and killing Google Reader, I'm in the midst of transitioning away from Google products where possible. I don't really feel like I'm in a position yet where I can do that with my primary email address, but maybe this is the impetus I need to start planning for that.

My recommendation: Bite the bullet and transition to a new email address. I did it earlier this year. I recommend buying your own domain so you're no longer strongly tied to any single mail host. You can set up Outlook.com as a (free) mail host for your domain. Outlook.com is surprisingly good, and it can push to iOS just fine.

Yeah, I probably need to start planning for host-independent email. I have a domain for this purpose that I've never gotten around to using (which I think is actually currently set up on a Google Apps domain -- too bad the grandfathering in is on a per-device basis), but now is probably as good a time as any. I haven't used outlook.com much other than to reserve my name as a fallback email option, but it seems solid and I might as well just connect my domain to it.

God, I haven't switched email addresses since Gmail launched -- when was that, 2004? I guess this was a pretty good run with Gmail -- remember switching email addresses every time you graduated or changed ISPs? -- but I halfway expect to have an even longer run that this.

japtor, I believe you're right, but I don't think there's any way to do that with an @gmail.com address. If I'm going to move away from that address, I'd just as soon move away from Google altogether. Though truth be told, I'd probably cough up $50 a year to maintain EAS sync like I used to have it. Grudgingly and not happily, but probably the path of least resistance I would take if it were an option.

topham, it's a pretty shitty move. I can't fundamentally fault them as I'm getting exactly the level of service I'm paying for, but they implemented their decision in an illogical and particularly customer-unfriendly fashion. Hey, their call. But my call to minimize reliance on Google services. Can't imagine how painful this would be if I were ensconced in the android universe.